


the weight of yearning

by captaincastello



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, First Crush, Flashbacks, Friendship, Growing Up, Hopeful Ending, Love Confessions, M/M, Pining Keith (Voltron), Separations, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 08:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15577398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captaincastello/pseuds/captaincastello
Summary: Well, this is it, he thought in simple words, yet everything felt so complicated, difficult.The last day together. The day that ends in the beginning of a mundane and indefinite yet positively lengthy period of semi-limbo. A void.Because what did a day without Shiro look like?





	the weight of yearning

**Author's Note:**

> so i was perusing through my wips and found this thing i worked on for a period of time around three months ago... anyways i was starved for a one-sided crush fic, and here it is, three months later ;;w;; i'm just glad i was able to finish this at all /cries/
> 
> ayways, so here's some angst and pining for your sorrow-starved soul

 

 

 

It was at the bottom of a box in the storage room collecting four years’ worth of dust, but Keith would never fail to recognize it in its ebony black glory, a vibrant purple snaking along the curve of the headband and lining the cushions that covered the speakers. As if a remnant of the past waiting to be found in the distant future, it has always remained here, until this morning when Lance’s mom asked for help to clean out their garage.

How did it end up here, two blocks away from his house?

He’s positive he never would have lost nor misplaced it.

He remembers that day-- his semi- funeral march down the stairs, head low, chest tight. A light kiss from Mom atop his head before he quickly slipped out of the house and into the bus. He was still holding the large headphones in his hands as he tried not to look back up his window to see Shiro.

Days later, he came back home without it, came back to a home without Shiro.

 

 

 

It felt like a day that came too soon.

 _Well, this is it_ , he thought in simple words, yet everything felt so complicated, difficult.

The last day together. The day that ends in the beginning of a mundane and indefinite yet positively lengthy period of semi-limbo. A void.

Because what did a day without Shiro look like?

All Keith knew was waking up in the morning to see his older neighbor, usually already drying his hair with a towel through his window. Standing side by side waiting for his bus and making sure Keith got on before Shiro himself rode his bike to high school. Spending an hour almost every night going over Keith’s homework together while Shiro let him take over his headphones. Saying good night by the door, another good night through the window. A “Good morning” when the sun came up the day after.

Looking back on his formative years, it wouldn’t be difficult to find that there were always traces of Shiro.

Shiro teaching him how to ride the bike when he was three, Shiro seven. Falling off the bike. Shiro carrying him on his back as he cried. Forgetting his homework one day during 4th grade. Shiro (about to graduate from middle school with a clean and perfect record) sneaking Keith out of school grounds on his bike to retrieve said homework. Finding out the teacher was absent and would accept papers the next day, Shiro laughing it off as he muffled Keith’s hair. Keith and Shiro looking for a suit for Shiro’s middle school dance. Keith feeling sorta awful inside a certain way for the first time when Shiro told him he was taking someone, yet not bothering to look up the word for it. Keith silently wondering why he can’t go have fun with Shiro, and why he wanted to so badly. Shiro practicing with Keith for Keith’s own middle school dance a few years later. Keith’s stomach making tiny somersaults and his entire body making clumsy mistakes as he held on to Shiro as they slowdanced (or tried to).

Keith finally finding the words describing everything he felt about Shiro, and apparently not for anyone else.

Shiro getting acceptance letters from universities in faraway places that Keith has never heard of. Congratulating Shiro while feeling like a liar because he felt disgruntled inside, and feeling bad for feeling that way.

Then, today.

The moving van was parked outside of Shiro’s house, just visible from Keith’s window. On the other side of it, the room that only yesterday was like Keith’s second room, was now simply an empty space with four walls. Like an entire place completely, unfamiliar and strange. How was it possible to remove all traces of memories accumulated in years that easily? How did that emptiness escape the confines of the room, and make its way all the way to Keith’s? It doesn’t seem fair to anyone, he thought.

But he hadn’t been entirely fair to Shiro, either. Keith didn’t take the news of his moving away too well—but was there ever a ‘good’ way of parting with anyone? And not just _anyone_ , but a _someone_ who was a constant variable in your life? Was this how it felt to lose a limb, except that you’d been carrying the knowledge of eventually losing it for a couple of months, and had to endure the slow agonizing countdown to the day when you had to let go?

Sure, they had phones and the internet to stay connected. But it just wouldn’t be the same anymore. Their separate lives would eat up most of their time. He’d lie and say nothing’s going to change, but he knows some things are just beyond anyone’s control, like the first time he woke up with stains in his pants and seeing the face in his dreams just a window away.

He spent the first few weeks processing the entire thing. _Shiro leaving_. It felt so surreal then. It felt too close and too far away. An unthinkable, impossible reality. Until only a month was left, and the days seemed to mock him with its steady progress towards the inevitable. Shiro was leaving regularly to visit universities and potential dormitories. Their house had a buyer. Boxes filled the spacey rooms now devoid of furniture and other domestic paraphernalia.

Keith didn’t know how to deal with missing someone who hadn’t quite totally left yet. And it felt stupid to tell anyone that because it already sounded stupid in his head.

Shiro staying in his room for one last summer homework felt even more unreal. Keith already finished it many warm nights ago, to keep himself from periodically checking out of his window to watch out for Shiro and his Dad pull up in their driveway from a long trip to a potential university that was going to take him away.

He had been lying under his desk table looking at the amateur map of stars he and Shiro had spent years carving when Shiro came up to his room to find him. Wordlessly, Shiro crawled into their tiny space, and Keith shimmied his body to the other end of the table to make room for him. There was more room back when they were younger. Now, shoulder brushed against shoulder, arm against arm. If Keith had dared to move a little and tilt his head to the side, he would’ve found the perfect nook to rest his head on. But he didn’t.

Shiro apologized for not being around too much. Keith simply shrugged, because it was the easy teenage-y way out of being honest.

“How much time have we got?” Shiro said. Keith can’t read his tone, but he sure felt a pang in his chest when he heard Shiro voice out the question that has been eating at him for a while.

“Dunno,” Keith replied. “They’ll honk when they arrive anyway.”

Keith’s three-day scouting activity starts today. He signed up, knowing it was on the day of Shiro’s move. At least he gets to say goodbye on his own terms, by not saying goodbye at all, and he won’t have to watch Shiro’s Dad’s car leave without wanting to chase after him or something stupid or dramatic like that.

They spent around ten minutes just lying there talking about anything but what was after, their long bodies sticking out into the rest of Keith’s room. Only ten minutes because Keith could only breathe in Shiro’s cologne and shampoo for too long without wanting to maybe touch his hair.

He stood up and pulled Shiro from beneath the table, and they sat by his bed where Keith’s summer homework lay, among other stuff.

“What’s with that box?” Keith said, gesturing to the open package of a haphazard display of various objects—things he immediately identified as Shiro Leftovers that might not be leaving this town with him.

“Oh, I was about to add that to our donation pile,” Shiro said without looking up from checking Keith’s English notebook. “But then I figured you might find something that could be useful for you or something.”

Keith used one leg to pull the box closer to the bed. It wasn’t heavy, as Shiro wasn’t the type to keep a lot of things that were of no practical and or long-term use, so he really didn’t have much to give away. Inside were a few pairs of old yet washed socks, a couple of sweaters, old winter gloves with frayed edges, a pen holder, a couple of book ends, some automobile magazines that were probably thrown in by his dad, and the pair of black and purple headphones that he always brought over during homework sessions.

Keith pulled the headphones out of the pile and curiously felt a sudden rush of nostalgia and loss—these were going to be left behind, to be replaced with something new from a new place he’d never been. Just as Keith was going to be left behind, with someone eventually taking his place. But what _was_ his place? Did he have a specific place in Shiro, just as Keith left a big one inside him that separated Shiro from everyone else?

He sat on the bed and simply stared at the headphones in his hand, light in its plastic exoskeleton yet substantially heavy in a different way that had nothing to do with actual mass. He looked at Shiro sitting by his legs beside the bed, dutifully going over Keith’s Mathematics homework. There will be no next time, probably not for a long while.

Keith plugged the audio jack into his phone, and wordlessly placed the headphones over Shiro’s ears like he always did when he wanted to share music he liked, and every time Shiro would sit back and listen without missing a beat of what he was doing. Keith always like that; more than music, he was sharing something of himself, and Shiro never turned him away. This time, he simply clicked ‘play’; the song was unimportant, only noise was. Noise that would drown out what he was about to say.

Just then, a bus honked in the distance.

His words tumbled out of him before he knew them.

“ _I like you_.”

Or, squeaked out of him. His voice, his hands and fingers lightly brushing against the tips of Shiro’s hair all felt unattached to his body, like he was already losing things quicker than he’d imagined. The bus honked again, sounding much closer.

“I-I like you, in the way brothers shouldn’t like brothers. I like you, Shiro, I really _really_ like you. I like you so much it feels like a stomachache sometimes when I can’t tell you.”

 _Honk_. Right outside his house.

“I’ve known for a while. And I also I know I can’t ask you to stay. I can’t ask you to like me back the same way.”

He choked a bit at the last word. He took a deep breath.

 _Honk_. The sound stretched out in a long howl, like a hospital apparatus signaling a flat line. The end of someone. He could only vaguely hear his mom’s voice calling him from downstairs.

Suddenly, Shiro’s hand flew up to his, and Keith’s heart was about to take a double take when Shiro carefully moved both their hands to adjust one headphone.

“Is that your bus already?” He said. His voice came out a bit softer than usual, and it sounded… disappointed. There was a tiny pause before he continued, “I’m only halfway done through Mathematics.”

“Thanks, Shiro,” Keith said briskly as he tucked his hands away. The last touch felt like a final goodbye of sorts. It suddenly made him feel so lonely. “But don’t worry about it, you really don’t have to trouble yourself with any of this.”

 “I really don’t mind, and it’s not any trouble,” Shiro said as he put his pen down. He shifted a bit so he could look squarely at Keith. He looked optimistic and—how does he keep it all together, Keith had to wonder. “Feel free to ask if there’s anything you might need help with.”

“I know,” Keith said, or squeaked, or whatever. His voice didn’t sound like his own. He quickly got up and grabbed his bag from the desk. His eyes burned, his throat felt stuffy and the bus was belting out another impatient couple of beats that made his head hurt.

Before Keith could go out the door, he felt Shiro gently catch his wrist. He turned his head enough to catch Shiro’s eye, but not entirely face him. Facing him completely would feel like being so strongly drawn to a magnet you’d want to full-body slam into, and he just couldn’t risk it.

“Did you want to have these?” Shiro asked as he held the headphones out.

Shiro, on his knees. Keith, about to leave. In another life, this might have been a cheesy midmorning soap opera his Dad would cry about while his Mom internally criticized it for its overused clichés.

“Yeah, sure,” Keith said, maybe a bit less enthusiastic as he should have been. “Thanks.” And he meant all of it.

He didn’t look back. Didn’t want to make some sentimental speech or screw the bus and linger for a hug or two. He didn’t want to make this into a bigger deal than it already was inside him, because staying in the moment for too long made it seem even more final.

And he was out the door, and when he got back three days later, Shiro had already gone far away.

 

 

 

 

There were a lot of things that reminded him Shiro had been a regular in his room—the carvings under his desk, polaroid pictures spanning his elementary and middle school years, the bell of the first bike Keith fell out of, Shiro’s old high school notebook he had left that final day on Keith’s bed. There was a simple sticky note taped to the front.

_Ask me again soon, if you want to._

Probably written in haste, just before he left for university, Keith supposed. _Ask again for any other high school concerns you might have_. A tiny gift for the “neighbor he used to tutor”.

Those, and the headphones given personally by Shiro, the one thing that passed through both their fingers.

So Lance had it all this time.

It’s coming back now—Keith got on the bus, took a seat looking at the opposite side of his house. Not a couple of minutes after the driver hit the accelerator, he got poked in the rib by someone on the other side of the aisle.

“Oh yeah,” Lance says now, after a couple of angry summons later. The colorful hairclips he’s using to pull his short hair back are definitely Allura’s. “I was going to return that.”

“Well, what happened?” Keith demands, knowing all too well that it’s a bit too late to get mad about something that’s already expired four years ago, especially when he himself forgot about it. He lent the headphones to Lance because he had been the internally whining and outwardly moping kid who felt too emotional to hold on to something of Shiro’s at the moment. And to be honest, he doesn’t even remember what he did within those three days at camp, apart from staring out into a lake or the stars at night. The entire thing had been a blur, and all he remembers was the deeply ingrained feeling of being lost.

“Look, it’s kinda too late to be angry about that don’t you think?”

“It was Shiro’s,” Keith says, as if that explains everything. Apparently it does, because Lance’s face sobers up. The years have made them good friends and fellow confidantes, and Keith didn’t think he could move on from his big childhood crush without letting it out, and Lance proved he was be a good listener.

“Oh, I’m sorry, man,” he says. “I didn’t know.”

“Forget it,” Keith says. “I mean, you’re right. It doesn’t even work now. I’m just being sentimental.”

“Uhh, it kinda hasn’t been working when you lent it to me?” Lance shrugs.

If Keith were sipping tea, he’d choke on it with a very ungraceful display of tonsils. “What?”

“The audio was already coming off in broken bits when I put it on,” Lance says. “Sometimes nothing came out of the speakers entirely. I actually handed it back to you on the bus, but you seemed so preoccupied about something, so I held onto it for you during camp. Except I also forgot about it when I got home, guess Mom just placed the broken thing in storage when she cleared out my bag.”

Keith blanched.

Is it possible to receive the full body-slamming impact of overdue embarrassment despite a four-year delay? Is he actually short-circuiting in vertical position right in this very moment? Is his mouth hanging off his face wide enough for two fistfuls of bees to fit in there?

Yes, yes, and disgusting and painful but yes. Keith can definitely attest to that right now.

A silvery blur appears in his peripheral vision, bringing with it a familiar whiff of _La Vie Est Belle_ that brings out the best smile from Lance. Even in her oldest and most faded sweatshirt, Allura could command all the attention from any room.

“Hey there, goddess,” Lance croons in a way that would usually discourage Keith from dating anyone ever, except these two are one of the best couples out there (next to his own parents) and both are good people, so he bites back a childish groan. Also he’s still pretty shaken by his recent discovery to be fully functional enough to react accordingly to his surroundings.

“Fellow associate,” Allura simply nods at Lance in reply, yet her amused smile says a different story. “Uh, what’s up with Keith?”

“Oh, he’s short-circuiting, and it’s partially my younger self’s fault,” Lance says, his hand naturally finding Allura’s.

“So you two have been idly chatting here while we broke our backs moving things out in the yard,” she replies, her fingers naturally curling into the spaces between Lance’s own.

“In my defense, Keith called me here—”

“Hey, I wouldn’t have had to if you returned these _earlier_ —”

“And he’s back,” Lance says.

“Ease up, you guys,” Allura quickly cuts them off with a laugh before their argument branches out into multiple and unrelated tangents like the proper way to pronounce ‘tomato’, or how to peel an apple. “Actually I’m just here to tell you we’ve got Shiro’s on video call in the living room. His lunch break only lasts so long but he wanted to drop by and say he’s coming back for the summer.”

Sunlight dances on the surface of an oasis in a barren desert. _Shiro’s coming back_. Baby turtles successfully complete their journey from sand to sea without any casualties from avian predators. _Shiro’s coming back_. TVXQ comes back together as five in a grand concert at Tokyo Dome. _Shiro’s coming back_. World peace, achieved and maintained. _Shiro’s coming back_.

“That’s great!” Lance exclaims, and not without a split-second side glance directed at Keith. “How long is he planning to stay?”

“It’s only for a couple of weeks since he needs to go back to finish his research and term papers, but he’s already booked his flight ticket,” Allura continues. “It would be better if he told you the details himself, I think, so why don’t we go back in? Also, your mom made us some lemonade and _chicharrones_ , Lance.”

“My favorite,” Lance says, already heading out the garage with Allura. “Come on, Keith, you don’t wanna miss him, don’t you?”

“Not even for the world,” he says, but no one except the universe hears this, the words softly dropping from his lips like a solemn promise to the stars.

Keith follows them out, his heart pounding with renewed understanding, brain replaying images that he carries with him every day. He thinks of their map of stars. He thinks of the empty space under his desk. He thinks of his unheard confession, how he gives something of himself and Shiro never turning him away.

_Ask me again soon, if you want to._

– _I can’t ask you to stay._

_Ask me again soon, if you want to._

– _I can’t ask you to like me back the same way._

_Ask me again soon._

He fervently hopes he’s understanding this the way Shiro probably intended it to mean the first time.

_If you want to._

Keith still definitely wants to.

 


End file.
